Charlie punched Jack in the arm.
He gave her a chagrined smile as he rubbed the bruise. “I must say, though, you still won’t understand, say… ancient Rya – they died out during the Nightmare Wars.” A stream of words with a lilting, sing-song rhythm flowed from Jack’s mouth. “That’s a line from one of their only surviving ballads. ‘I have been where Llachau was slain, brother of Llyr, marvelous in songs, when ravens croaked over blood.’ Beautiful poetry.”
“Mmm, yeah. Beautiful.” Blood. Ravens. Lovely.
Jack held up a finger. “But I must say, my favorites are in middle elven, especially the ‘Death of the King.’ It describes High King Gwalchmai’s final battle, but you see, he was never buried despite his mortal wounds and giving his final life’s blood to seal Ard Ri’s Great Gate. This gave rise to the myth that he would return to Seinne Sonne in her greatest hour of need, when Ard Ri also rose again. And when High King Gwalchmai calls for his sword, but none will bring it to him because his men refuse to acknowledge his mortality; simply powerful.” Jack sighed dreamily. “Those days had adventure!”
“That story sounds awfully familiar,” Charlie muttered.
“Oh, it’s a common element in the recitation of the epics.”
A flash and a bang exploded from a corner of the room, spreading white powder across three tables. Shrieks and complaints rippled outward from the affected area, while the culprit protested loudly that he’d pulled off the spell flawlessly before.
“Never a dull moment,” Charlie murmured.
***
This would never do. Lallia pouted, sitting in the rafters of the thatch roof, looking down at Charlie and Rhys sitting on opposite sides of the table. They hardly even looked at each other.
Phase Two of her grand master plan was not going well. No. This situation would not do at all. Why did humans and elves have to be so complicated? Pixies were simple. They were meant to be one, so they stayed together.
Lallia twisted to look at Tom stalking spiders and mice – though he hadn’t yet strayed more than half a breath from her. She never could have imagined the aching torment of being apart from him before, and she never wanted to experience it again. It made her even more convinced of how important her plan was. It just wasn’t right to be without the other half of one’s soul.
“Tom,” she called. “Do you have anymore of that powdered love apple left?”
Tom smirked. “Enough to make an elephant fall for a mouse. Why?”
Lallia pointed down at the stubborn pair. “That’s why.”
Tom’s smirk changed to a frown. “We’re not supposed to meddle in mortal affairs of the heart. Remember that mess with the donkey head?”
“But this is different,” Lallia said. “For one thing, I know they’re right for each other, if they could just see it. Besides,” Lallia flipped her candy pink hair. “I’m a Changer, and if this doesn’t need Changing, I don’t know what does.”
Tom shook his head, but the smirk returned. He bowed, saluting with his green sabre. “I acquiesce to my lady’s wishes.”
Tom pulled a tiny vial out of his belt pouch and tossed it to Lallia. The powder inside was pale green. It was the right stuff, but that color was simply dreadful for a love potion! Lallia changed it to pink and nodded in satisfaction.
Now then. What would be the best way to administer it? Rhys was already wary of the pixies. She didn’t want to give him reason to suspect anything. Lallia scanned through the bustle below, and noticed the serving girl dodging through the narrow aisles, carrying a tray of drinks. That would do.
Cloaking herself in invisibility, Lallia fluttered down to hover over the tray. There were four cups on it. Just to be certain, Lallia sprinkled powder in all four of them. No sooner had she done so than one of the other patrons reached back and snatched a cup from the tray.
The server fussed that he’d need to pay for the pilfered cup, but she didn’t take it back. The burly man laughed and downed the cup’s contents in one long swig.
Chagrined, Lallia thought quickly. She didn’t think the serving girl would appreciate the big lug’s affections if she were the first female he saw.
Tom thought faster.
A large ginger tabby cat fell from the rafters into the man’s lap. It hissed and spat, indignant that her mouse hunting was so rudely interrupted, and clawed her way onto the table. The burly man chased after the cat, crooning promises of his undying love.
Lallia snickered and fluttered after the retreating serving maid, quickly weaving the suggestion that the remaining cups should be delivered only to a certain table that had been waiting ever so long for their drinks.
The girl plunked her tray between Jack and Rhys, muttering a quick apology for taking so long. Jack looked up from his scribbling long enough to seize one of the cups. As he brought it to his lips, Lallia darted in and pushed upward on the bottom, spilling the contents down Jack’s front. He jumped up, spluttering, and tangled his long legs in the bench, spilling himself onto the floor. Charlie clapped, as if it were a show. Lallia pirouetted and bowed, even though she was invisible.
Jack picked himself up off the floor and brushed at his sodden tunic.
Charlie picked up her cup. She sniffed its contents, wrinkled her nose, and set it down. Disappointed, Lallia landed on her shoulder and whispered encouragements to give it at least a sip. A sip was better than nothing. Lallia even wove in a hint of thirstiness. Hadn’t it been a long, busy day?
“Did either of you notice how blue her eyes are?” Jack said, watching the serving girl dreamily. Apparently he managed to swallow a bit of the potion after all. Ah, well. It wouldn’t hurt him.
Charlie tilted her cup to eye its dark, frothy contents. Lallia pushed a little harder, nudging and poking. One sip couldn’t hurt, right? Charlie lifted the cup, but the moment her nose caught a waft of the smell she set it down. Lallia glowered. It was best if they both got a dose. Then again, what woman could resist a man madly in love with her?
Holding her breath, Lallia watched as Rhys carefully tasted his, and finding nothing amiss, drank. Lallia gave a silent cheer. Charlie studied him with a cross between dubiousness and disgust.
“How can you stand the smell?” she asked. “That’s nasty even for beer.”
Rhys sniffed it, shrugged, and took another sip. “I smell nothing.”
“Nothing?” Charlie said incredulously. “It’s like… it’s like taking your basement, locking it up until it molds, and adding a dead fish for good measure.” She sighed. “What I wouldn’t give for a soda.”
“I have never heard of so-da, so I very much doubt you will find it here,” Rhys said.
“You really can’t smell that?” Charlie asked as Rhys brought the cup to his lips again. Lallia watched Rhys carefully for signs that the potion was working. He didn’t so much as sneak surreptitious glances at Charlie.
Rhys shook his head. “I have never possessed a strong sense of smell.”
“Lucky,” Charlie muttered.
Lallia grumpily settled in for the long haul. The powder would take longer to act if Rhys wasn’t looking at Charlie. Maybe Lallia should have added a few of Charlie’s eyelashes to the powder to make it work faster. Oh well. Hindsight was 50/50. Fifty percent chance of making things better, fifty percent chance of making no difference, fifty percent chance of making things worse. Which was 150%, but only humans and elves worried about that sort of thing.
Charlie wrinkled her nose. “Do you think they have anything drinkable?”
“Do you think she might say what she’s called by?” Jack asked wistfully, his eyes still following the server.
“Why don’t you ask her?” Charlie said.
“Really?” Jack said, sitting straighter. “Do you think she would answer me?”
“While you are asking,” Rhys said, “inquire if there is any autumn cider left. It should be more palatable than the beer.”
Jack jumped up from the bench as the serving girl passed near, nearly
tangling his legs in the bench because he wasn’t paying attention to their lanky length. “A moment, miss! A moment!” he called, chasing after her.
Rhys snorted. “You have chosen strange company, Gatewalker.”
“So far, it’s been more like my company choosing me.”
Rhys lifted an eyebrow at that, but didn’t comment.
Jack returned disappointed, with a cup of cider and the sad news that the object of his affections had a husband and two children. Jack started to hand the cup of cider to Rhys, but he waved him toward Charlie.
“That ought to be better than nothing,” Rhys said.
“Thanks,” Charlie said, surprised, as she took the cup. She lifted it to her lips. “Mmmm. Definitely much better.” She offered Rhys an appreciative smile.
Lallia leaned forward, certain that he would confess his own affections.
Rhys gave a vague wave of dismissal.
So much for confessions of love.
***
Lallia wakened from a doze when Charlie and Jack turned in for the night, and she realized Rhys had finished his drink long ago. Lallia glared as his shadowed profile. He should have been spouting poetry. Or at least staring moony eyed at Charlie. Lallia knew the potion was working – Jack’s little sip had put him in a lovesick haze, hadn’t it? Had he noticed Lallia’s potion and taken an antidote? Certainly not in so short a time. So why….
Lallia thought hard. A smile slowly spread across her face. A love potion created the impression of being in love and let nature take over. But if the seed were already planted there was nothing for the potion to work on.
Phase two was going well after all.
***
Sleeping that night was the singularly strangest thing Charlie had ever done.
With no concern for potential lice or suffocating proximity (or gender), the mages bundled their sleeping rolls together on a raised, fur-covered platform that was warmed from underneath. Jack joined them like a longtime veteran and made one of the others shuffle over to make room for Charlie.
Rhys presumably made his own arrangements because he never joined them.
Charlie tried to sleep, but ended up lying awake listening to a “chorus” of snores and heavy breathing, punctuated with moans and shuffles. Charlie, pinned between the long unconscious Jack and another mage (and trying not to think of what else might be sharing the furs), tried not to squirm.
She had less luck trying not to think.
CHAPTER NINE
Last of the Wilds
The morning dawned freezing cold and clear as glass. The pale sky stretched high and far, clear of all but a faint, distant haze of cloud. The mountains reared up like dark sentinels, impossibly tall, cutting off much of the early light.
Jack blew on his thin, gloveless fingers, trying to keep them warm enough to grip the stick of chalk in his hand.
Rhys glowered darkly, shadowed in the hood of his cloak. “You are building a gate, not scribing a book. The task needn’t take all week.” Beneath his cloak he wore a full set of hardened leather armor. Charlie couldn’t be sure if he really thought he’d need it or if he was just being cautious. Either way, she was starting to wonder if she was underdressed. She didn’t have anything approaching armor besides her shooting gloves.
“Patience, patience,” Jack sang. He never took his gaze from either the spell book in his hands or the chalk marks he etched on the rocky ground. Charlie wondered how he could make out the tiny cat-scratch in such dim early morning light. “I’m sure all of us want to arrive on the other side without mishap.”
“Yes, please,” Charlie said.
The pixies huddled in the hood of Charlie’s cloak, shivering against the sides of her neck. She heard Tom give a pixie-sized yawn.
Rhys shrugged off his pack and set it by his feet, settling in for the long haul.
They weren’t the only ones getting an early start. Over by Cruatan’s “landing platform,” two sleepy-looking mages manned a pair of pillars with glowing marks incised on them. These, apparently, were reprogrammable gates that the mages activated to send early travelers on their way. But Jack said they would only lead to the major cities they were set up for, not out into the mountains where they were going.
Jack had a gate spot out there, from his time spent at Cruatan, and it was the closest they could get to where Rhys sensed a piece of the Keystone before walking the rest of the distance. And this far out in the sticks, there were hardly any roads.
“Hey, Rhys,” Charlie said. “You can put your stuff in Jack’s bag instead of carrying it. That’s where my stuff is.” Well, besides her knife, her bow, and quiver. She figured that sort of thing she should keep with her.
Rhys glanced at Jack. “It is unwise to put all of one’s supplies in one bag.”
“Oh. Right. I guess so.” If they lost Jack’s bag, that was a lot of junk down the drain. Mostly Jack’s. But she didn’t think she’d be up to hauling a heavy pack through the mountains just yet. Manning the cade didn’t call for much hiking.
“If you can set the spell with your book and your nonsense markings, then you can do without.” Rhys snapped his fingers, producing a bright white spark.
“Aha!” Jack said, stabbing a chalky finger at him. “You still use hand gestures. Physically marking out the weave of the spell ensures that the gate will not open into a tree, or in open air. Besides, if you are so concerned about time, you could open a gate yourself. If you have a landing marked.”
Rhys looked down at his hands and rubbed them together, tiny crackles flashing between them. “My gates do not lead where I want to go.” The statement seemed simple, but Charlie heard an unexpected note of pain.
“You never went to a mage academy,” Jack said smugly.
“Worse,” Rhys snapped. “I had tutors. Are you finished?”
“Almost,” Jack said, stepping back and admiring his handiwork. He adjusted a mangled symbol. He snapped his book shut and stowed it away.
Jack gleefully rubbed his hands together like a child anticipating a treat, then placed them in the middle of his markings. The gate appeared in response to his softly spoken words, creating a rippling ring.
The two men passed through without hesitation but Charlie paused before following suit. This part still weirded her out. She jumped through.
***
In the space of a blink the rocky mountainside vanished, replaced by thick forest and white clouds against a gray sky that suddenly seemed a lot closer. Icy wind washed through the trees. Charlie rubbed her arms and pulled her cloak tighter. The pixies were solid little warm patches at the back of her neck. It seemed like they’d gone back to sleep.
“We have now crossed beyond the borders of Seinne Sonne,” Jack announced. “Welcome to the Northern Reaches.”
“Here there be dragons,” Charlie muttered as they set out. Looking around the deep woods, Charlie suddenly understood every single fairy tale that involved a dark enchanted forest. The trees of her own world seemed thin and pitiful now, trapped in planters or constrained to carefully tended green spaces. Here they stood untouched for centuries, growing thick and tall. Their branches twisted together to form a dense cathedral of green. They seemed to whisper together, their leaves shushing in the wind. Or perhaps they really did whisper to each other in some bending, groaning, rattling language she couldn’t understand.
“We’re still in the middle of the mountains,” Jack explained. “In fact, it used to be part of Seinne Sonne. Always a harsh land of long winters, the Northern Reaches had nevertheless been home to a hardy people, largely hunters, shepherds, and cattlemen, probably. Then the Nightmare Wars raged across the mountains’ slopes, scorching away everything that was not stone. The Northern Reaches became completely barren of life.”
“No one’s lived here since?” Charlie said.
“People have tried, over the centuries, but the Nightmare Wars truly changed the face of the land, staining it with death. The forest has grown largely unchecked.”
No wonder the place seemed so gloomy.
No roots or branches snaked out to grab her, but Charlie couldn’t shake the feeling that they could have if they’d wanted. She could swear that eyes watched her from the dark shadows between the trees. Dryads might be hidden in their ancient trunks, gnomes under their roots, nyads and nixies in the streams that fed them. Charlie might even believe they could take themselves from place to place with slow, wormlike motion of their rots, reaching out to clasp the “arms” of their friends.
Here and there they had to climb through or over rock falls, and Charlie was glad of her sneakers. She didn’t want to think about trying to climb rocks in new boots.
Some ranger I am, she thought more than once, wishing she really did have some tracking and woodsmanship skills. The occasional hiking and camping trip was nothing compared to making your way through unfamiliar territory without benefit of hiking trail or map.
As hard a time as Charlie had though, Jack had it worse. It soon became very obvious that he’d never done any walking through rough terrain, and probably never been any significant distance outside a city. Charlie found herself helping him get over obstacles more often than not.
Rhys, faster than the two of them put together, would go as far as he could without losing them, and then, emanating impatience, would lean against a tree until they almost caught up.
“It’s so quiet,” Charlie mused. She was so used to the low, constant hum of the city. The hiss of car tires on the roads, the hum and squeal of the mag lev, the occasional rumble of a jet or cargo shuttle, the countless tiny sounds of thousands of people all living within a confined space.
“It is too quiet,” Rhys said. “No birds. No squirrels. No life. This forest is empty.”
As the terrain wound upward, the trees grew fewer and thinner. More sunlight broke through the green canopy above them. More rocks obstructed their way, slowing their progress.
That night they set up camp in the midst of an ancient ruin, on a smooth terrace twice the size of the arcade – the first sign of civilization they had seen since leaving Cruatan. The ruins were little more than low stone walls and a few crumbling arches among the trees, but the spaces between them indicated a settlement of significant size.
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